Chapter 15 - THE ASSASSIN WHO SERVED TWO QUEENS
The assassin was Captain Rowan’s deputy, Sir Lucan. Under truth draught, he admitted serving Queen Aurelia since childhood.
His family belonged to the Keepers, a secret order created not to free Aurelia but to ensure the royal bargain was eventually paid. They believed the Hollow Court’s protection kept famine, invasion, and plague from returning.
“Why call Ella ‘Your Majesty’?” Rowan asked.
Lucan’s jaw locked. The covenant burned his tongue whenever he tried to answer.
He drew instead: a winged woman kneeling before a human child, then a crown broken into seven pieces.
The seventh covenant tablet might translate the image. Investigators traced the false Adrian who stole it to the flooded tunnel beneath the ash tree. Adrian, Ella, Rowan, and Mara entered during low moon.
The tunnel opened into a gallery of preserved memories. Each floated inside a crystal sphere. Adrian saw his first meeting with Cinderella repeated from angles no human observer could have occupied.
Ella touched one sphere and vanished into it.
Adrian followed.
They found themselves inside Cinderella’s memory of the ball. Yet instead of watching from Cinderella’s eyes, Ella stood unseen beside the Ash Godmother, helping lace the blue gown.
The godmother turned toward her.
“You know the price,” she said.
May you like
Ella’s memory-self answered, “Take anything from me. Just let her have one night.”
The sphere shattered before Adrian could see her original face.
